I. The Belsen Camp

Over and over, Jeff Roberts
(Jeff@stumpy.demon.co.uk)
has told us that the Third Reich had "no deliberate policy of
starvation," "still no evidence of a deliberate policy," etc.
Many other "revisionists" believe this as well.

This despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Belsen camp,
at the time of its capture, was filled with 60,000 inmates at the brink
of death from starvation. Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht was hoarding hundreds
of tons of food a mere two miles away. (Belsen was the first camp
discovered by the Western Allies; if you've seen movies of bulldozers
pushing emaciated corpses into mass graves, they were probably taken at
Belsen.)

When confronted with this fact, Mr. Roberts responded that the inmates:

...did not die of starvation. Most died of disease. And that food
was about one weeks supply. The question is about food. But most of
the inmates died of typhus, not starvation.

So far, Mr. Roberts is being pretty disingenuous. It's common
knowledge that poor nutrition lowers one's immune system, and starvation
drastically so. Whether an inmate managed to resist disease long enough
to die from sheer weakness is an issue only to those who will seize upon
any excuse to defend the Nazis.

And such flawed argumentation is not unique to Mr. Roberts. More
recently, another "revisionist" pooh-poohed the idea that starvation
was to blame for the hideous death toll, and issued this callous
challenge:

Find me one picture of an emaciated inmate with the requisite
swollen belly of the starving. You won't find one. The
inmates are emaciated because they were passing their bodily fluids
anally to and past fatal levels. Literally, they shit themselves to
death as a side effect of the epidemic raging at Belsen.

The argument, boiled down to its essense, is that typhus is an
act of God. Because inmate deaths were "a side effect" of this, the
Nazis -- who had imprisoned them in a filthy, overcrowded camp with
little food or medicine -- are not culpable. This is an apologetic of
the worst kind.

But Mr. Roberts, unlike his colleague, was at least honest enough to
allow how withholding food might reduce resistance to disease:

Typhus is caused by lice. Healthy people will not catch it. But people
on short rations, [the rations had been reduced from 1000 to 600
calories at this time], in overcrowded conditions, and poor
sanitation, and not de-loused, will die very quickly.

This is correct. The problem was that 60,000 people were fed
insufficiently, and this problem manifested itself with a variety of
symptoms: from emaciation, to lowered immunity, to typhus, to death.

We must not let the varying symptoms blind us to the root causes.
One of the major problems was the lack of sufficient food. Others were
the overcrowding and the lack of sanitation.

All these problems were caused by the Nazis' policy of
forcing innocent people, far too many people, into too-small camps,
with too-little attention paid to their care. There is no denying this.
This is the real crime of the Nazis; exactly how the victims died is a
detail.

But specifically regarding starvation, we turn to the large supply of
food found outside the Belsen camp. Even if the food was only one
week's supply, the question is: why was it not given to the inmates?
The Nazi soldiers found in the area were not starving. There is a
famous
photograph
of the plump SS women who were captured at Belsen.

To be sure, food was not plentiful, but the hoard that was discovered
was excess food, food that was not eaten by the German army or
civilians. It was not part of the stream of food that flowed from
croplands into people's mouths; it was just sitting in a huge
storehouse, not being eaten.

Even if would have prolonged life for everyone at Belsen by just one
week -- that week would have been enough time to save many lives.

But would it have been just a week? Perhaps Mr. Roberts thinks so.
Mr. Roberts, however, has not done research into the caloric
content of the various foods in that storehouse. I have.

My figures below come from Margo Feiden's The Calorie
Factor, by Margo Feiden, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989. I've
done all the arithmetic to convert tons to pounds etc., and I've divided
the results by 60,000, the number of people in the camp at liberation.
All figures given, if they err, err conservatively -- I'm taking into
account the poor quality of nutrition available in central Europe in
early-mid '45.

There were 600 tons of potatoes, which would have provided 5180 calories
per person.

The 120 tons of tinned meat would have provided 4140. I'm using a
figure for standard-grade beef, unboned, on the theory that the tinned
meat was deboned but that the tins weighed about as much as the bones
would.

The 30 tons of sugar, 1680 calories per person.

The 20 tons of powdered milk, 850.

The bakery could produce 60,000 loaves daily, and a small loaf of
bread is about 800 calories -- I'm unsure whether to include that,
because a source of grain for the bakery was listed as being in the
store, but not quantified. We know Kramer got 10,000 loaves a week,
which is 150 calories per person per week. Note that the 10,000 loaves
a week was nowhere near the full production of the bakery. I'm
assuming that the remaining 97.6% production capacity of the
bakery was not fully usable due to lack of flour. I actually do not
believe this is true, since that same bakery was feeding the Wehrmacht.
I suspect that more that 2.4% of the capacity could have been siphoned
off to the camp, if it had been a priority.

Of course it was not a priority, because the Untermenschen in the
Belsen camp could not receive food before the racially-pure German
people in the Wehrmacht and in the nearby towns and villages.

I won't count the unquantified "cocoa, grain, wheat and other
foodstuffs," though cocoa powder ranges from 28 to 46 calories per
inmate per ton, depending on its fat content. Each twenty tons of
cocoa powder would have been another day of life for 60,000 people.

That's a total of 11,850 calories per person, excluding the meager
weekly bread supply.

Generally speaking, the number of calories per person per day, counting
only the supplies found in the store and the known output of the bakery
(which is 40 times under its capacity), are 21+11850/d where d is the
number of days the food is spread out.

Mr. Roberts notes that the inmates' food supply had been reduced to
600 calories per day. It's also worth noting that Hans Frank's diary
mentions that figure as the caloric allotment for the Poles which was
leaving them open for disease:

Obermedizinalrat Dr. Walbaum expresses his opinion of the health
condition of the Polish population. Investigations which were
carried out by his department proved that the majority of Poles eat
only about 600 calories, whereas the normal requirement for a human
being is 2,200 calories. The Polish population was enfeebled to
such an extent that it would fall an easy prey to spotted fever...

The last line could be a premonition of what would happen in Belsen
and other Nazi camps a few years later:

If the food rations were to be diminished again, an enormous increase
off the number of illnesses could be predicted.

So using 600 calories per day -- starvation rations -- we solve for
d and get 20.5 days.

Three weeks' worth of food for 60,000 people was locked up two miles
away from Belsen. Horrible. At least three weeks of food, because
it doesn't include the cocoa, grain, wheat, or the remaining bakery
production capacity.

If this is not de facto evidence for a policy of starvation, I don't
know what is. The camp commandant talked about sending out five trucks
to pick up food, but being denied because it was reserved for the
Wehrmacht. But even without the commandant's testimony, it's obvious
that only orders from above could have prevented a camp official with a
heart from simply taking the trucks and delivering food to the camp.
Or, if the Nazis cared about the inmates at all, they could have
released a few hundred healthy prisoners under guard, and had them
carry food to the rest.

But if the aim is to prove Nazi intent to starve undesirables, we do
not need to rely on the facts in evidence when the camps were freed.
The Nazis' own documentation makes the case against them.

The case is laid out in other entries of Hans Frank's diary, as
cited above. Italics appear in NCA, but
boldface is my emphasis.

p. 893:

FRANK DIARY, Conference Volume,

Cabinet session in Cracow on 24 August 1942

Cabinet session in the Great Conference Room of the Government
Building in Cracow

Monday, 24 August 1942

Subject: A new Plan for seizure and for food [Ernaehrung] of the
General Gouvernement

The General Gouvernement was Nazi-occupied Poland.

p. 894:

A few days ago a meeting with the Reich Marshal took place in
Berlin. The Reich Marshal had the reports concerning the almost
catastrophic developments in the food situation in Germany.
According to all confidential reports of the police, as well as of
the Gauleiter, which, as he expressed himself, also confirmed by
his own experiences, the situation is as follows: unless a
considerable improvement in the food situation in Germany can be
achieved in a short time, serious consequences to the health of the
people, especially the German working people, would result. [...]

Under these circumstances you probably will not be surprised that
the saying now has become true: Before the German people are to
experience starvation, the occupied territories and their people
shall be exposed to starvation.

p. 895:

The new demand will be fulfilled exclusively at the expense of the
foreign population. It must be done cold-bloodedly and without
pity; for this contribution of the General Government is still more
important this year since the occupied Eastern territories --
Ukraine and Ostland -- will not yet be able to make an important
contribution toward the relief of Germany's food problem.
For this reason I wanted to acquaint you, Gentlemen, here in this
governmental session with the decisions which I have made known
today to Party member Naumann. You will essentially find an
addition increase of the quota of foodstuffs to be shipped to
Germany and new regulations for the feeding of the population;
especially of the Jews and of the Polish population, whereby, if
possible, the provisioning of the working people, especially of
those working for German interests, shall be maintained.

p. 896:

The feeding of a Jewish population, estimated heretofore at 1.5
million, drops off to an estimated total of 300,000 Jews, who still
work for German interests as craftsmen or otherwise. For these the
Jewish rations, including certain special allotments which have
proved necessary for the maintenance of working capacity, will be
retained. The other Jews, a total of 1.2 million, will no longer be
provided with foodstuffs.

p. 900:

In whatever difficulties you observe some place here, in the form of
the sicknesses of your workers, the breakdown of your associations,
etc., you must always think of the fact that it is still much
better when a Pole breaks down than that a German succumb. That we
sentence 1.2 million Jews to die of hunger should be noted only
marginally. It is a matter, of course, that should the Jews not
starve to death it would, we hope, result in a speeding up of
anti-Jewish measures.

I point out incidentally that the document ends with very explicit
reference to the Final Solution:

p. 902:

Not unimportant manpower has been taken from us in form of our old
proven Jewish communities. It is clear that the working program is
made difficult when in the middle of the program, during the war,
the order for complete annihilation of the Jews is given. The
responsibility for this cannot be placed upon the government of the
General Government. The directive for the annihilation of the Jews
comes from higher quarters.

As conclusion, I'd like to read from Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz,
Collier Books, New York, 1993, p. 74. From chapter 7, "A Good Day."

But how could one imagine not being hungry? The Lager is hunger:
we ourselves are hunger, living hunger.

On the other side of the road a steam-shovel is working. Its
mouth, hanging from its cables, opens wide its steel jaws, balances
a moment as if uncertain in its choice, then rushes upon the soft,
clayey soil and snaps it up voraciously, while a satisfied snort of
thick white smoke rises from its control cabin. Then it rises,
turns half around, vomits backwards its mouthful and begins again.

Leaning on our shovels, we stop to watch, fascinated. At every bite
of its mouth our mouths also open, our Adam's apples dance up and
down, wretchedly visible under the flaccid skin. We are unable to
tear ourselves away from the sight of the steam-shovel's meal.

Sigi is seventeen years old and is hungrier than everybody,
although he is given a little soup every evening by his probably
not disinterested protector. He had begun to speak of his home in
Vienna and of his mother, but then he slipped on to the subject of
food and now he talks endlessly about some marriage luncheon and
remembers with genuine regret that he failed to finish his third
plate of bean soup. And everyone tells him to keep quiet, but
within ten minutes Bela is describing his Hungarian countryside and
the fields of maize and a recipe to make meat-pies with corncobs
and lard and spices and...and he is cursed, sworn at and a third
one begins to describe...

How weak our flesh is! I am perfectly well aware how vain these
fantasies of hunger are, but dancing before my eyes I see the
spaghetti which we had just cooked, Vanda, Luciana, Franco and I,
at the sorting-camp when we suddenly heard the news that we would
leave for here the following day; and we were eating it (it was so
good, yellow, filling), and we stopped, fools, stupid as we were --
if we had only known! And if it happened again ... Absurd. If
there is one thing sure in this world it is certainly this: that
it will not happen to us a second time.